Three Poplars on Plyuschikha Street

Nyura lives in the country. Her husband sends her to Moscow to sell home-cured ham at the market and bring the money back. It is the first time in her life she has been to the city. She gets into a taxi; the driver, Alexander, is calm, courteous, and is not trying to sell her anything. They talk on the way. Nyura fails to sell the ham, stays at a relative's flat, and in the evening the telephone rings: that taxi is waiting downstairs. She can open the door and go down, or not. Tatyana Lioznova directs the Soviet film; seventy-nine minutes, with Tatyana Doronina as Nyura and Oleg Yefremov as the driver. Lioznova later made the series Seventeen Moments of Spring. In eighty minutes the film covers a single day, and by stopping where nothing happens it shows what is being lost.